Is Lean Six Sigma at a Crossroads?

“39 Companies Describe their Challenges and Strategies for Success”

Applying the scientific method to business is a valuable undertaking, especially in sales and marketing.

Lean six sigma is a scientific approach.

Yet, although lean (and six sigma) have won converts and saved millions of dollars at some companies, they are not always successful (sometimes it even creates enemies).

Why? What are the challenges that make it difficult?

Are these challenges inherent to lean six sigma, or does anyone with rational approaches face them? What countermeasures will work?

Robert Crescenzi (who provided an interview for my book Sales and Marketing the Six Sigma Way) recently conducted a series of interviews with 39 leading six sigma-oriented companies, such as  3M, Analog Devices, BMW, Caterpillar, Dell, Eastman Chemicals, McKesson, NewPage, PWC, and Wal-Mart.

What he learned provides a fascinating window on these companies and their process-oriented leaders.

Here are five of the ten major questions he asked them (you’ll learn the answers to all ten of his questions in this month’s webinar):

• What is the biggest challenge you are faced with as a lean six sigma champion in your organization?
• What are the key drivers for boosting lean six sigma results and sustaining the culture change?
• What is the biggest gap in proficiency that hinders performance of your green and black belts?
• How has your organization been able to replicate improvements across the organization?
• If you could make one improvement to boost lean six sigma ROI, what would it be?

While describing what he learned in his interviews, Robert will also recommend some strategies for addressing the challenges these companies told him about.

You and I will have the opportunity to ask Robert some questions, especially about how sales and marketing organizations are affected.

Don’t miss the valuable and unique insights you’ll hear about in this webinar.

Here’s what other attendees have said about SPIF! Webinars:

“It provided me with more robust tools to begin to shape out a project I have been working on in improving our sales approach overall.”
Ruthann, Corporate Executive, Missouri

“You get beyond the conceptual and get to REAL documents and steps that you use. I have designed a couple of sales processes and am currently tweaking my own process for finding, winning and keeping customers for my consulting biz.”
Mike, Consultant, Iowa

“As usual Michael, you got right to the heart of the matter and the difficulties that the sales function is faced with.  Excellent.”
Andrew Wilcock, Cranfield University

Your webinar gave me a strategy for testing out a nurturing campaign in my organization.
I liked the dialogue format – kept me engaged the entire hour.”
Mary Lou Joseph, Verint

You’ll receive immediately actionable information that will change the way you manage your marketing and selling organization. After you have registered for the webinar, you’ll receive a link to the page containing the screen capture video, and an MP3 of the event. When you complete the evaluation, you’ll also will receive a pdf file of the presentation slides and a recording of the event, in addition to special offers from Michael and Phil that will help you improve your team’s pre-sales engineering process.

These webinars are also excellent for anyone who is analyzing their sales process/organization to determine what kind of outside help might be needed.

Bob has led quality initiatives for a $33 billion global business group; led four Lean Six Sigma deployments (including two recognized in national publications), while using best practices to accelerate deployment and time and achieve results. Bob is an in-demand speaker at Six Sigma conferences in Finance, Healthcare, and Marketing and Sales. He is a Certified Senior Baldridge Examiner (6 years tenure), and LSS MBB; a judge for the International Benchmarking Clearinghouse (2 years tenure) and has assessed over 30 world-class companies’ quality systems acquiring unique insights into approaches that have made these companies world-class competitors.

I’m Michael Webb, and I'm the author of "Sales and Marketing the Six Sigma Way" (Kaplan, 2006). My team and I have helped dozens of companies such as MAQUET, Thermo Fisher Scientific, Marriott, WaterFurnace, DDI, and many smaller companies to identify bottlenecks, change behaviors, increase close ratios, and improve forecast accuracy by applying the concepts of lean and six sigma to their sales and marketing departments. I delivered the keynote addresses to the first two conferences ever held on applying Six Sigma to marketing and sales and have extensive sales training facilitation and field coaching experience with hundreds of sales people and managers in the U.S. and Canada.